Introduction

Picture Elements has developed the Imaging Subsystem
Engine (ISE) Board. This
PCI-bus board provides an unmatched set of document image
processing functions for scanners and scanning subsystems capable
of providing a grayscale or color data stream.

This grayscale orientation, even when the
focus is simply on high-quality binary images,
is what distinguishes the ISE Board from traditional scanner
interface boards. ISE's use of grayscale and color compression
is what distinguishes it from other grayscale interface boards;
those other boards force the system to move uncompressed
grayscale data to disk, slowing the highest-speed production
scanners.

The ISE Board is a PCI bus board which can either function as
a scanner interface or as a network-accessible resource called
the Post Processing Server (PPS). The board includes special
features for high-speed, high-quality document imaging. Features
include:

Custom Image Processing Daughterboards

Manufacturers who have a special image processing function
they wish to have implemented are welcome to develop a custom
daughterboard to attach to the ISE Board. The open software
environment and PCI-bus electrical environment of the ISE
architecture make this relatively painless. Picture Elements can
also develop such solutions for you on a joint or exclusive
development basis.

Scanner Interface Daughterboards

The daughterboard position with access to the PCI-bus rear
connector panel is typically reserved for scanner interface
daughterboards. A variety of such daughterboards have been
developed.

Other scanner interfaces are currently being developed to
further the goal of hooking the ISE Board to the existing
grayscale outputs of leading production-speed document scanners.

Custom Scanner Interface Daughterboards

Manufacturers of production document scanners who require a
custom daughterboard solution for interfacing the ISE Board to
their scanner's existing grayscale, color or binary interface are
urged to contact Picture Elements.

We can either support your own design effort or provide a
solution on joint development or exclusive development contract
terms.

If you are just now developing or re-designing your grayscale
interface, consider using our existing solution, the DSPEI
scanner interface daughterboard. It implements the GS68 Specification, available
below.

The GS68 Interface is used by the Picture
Elements DSPEI scanner interface daughterboard
as its method for receiving information from single- or
dual-sided grayscale scanners into the ISE Board.

For those scanner or line-scan camera manufacturers who are
first creating or are modifying their grayscale interface,
Picture Elements has developed a grayscale interface which allows
the efficient connection of simplex and duplex grayscale (in
addition to bit-serial binary) data streams to the ISE Board.

This document details the interface implemented by the Picture
Elements DSPEI daughterboard to the ISE Board.

Memory Mezzanine Boards

In addition to special function daughterboards, Memory
Mezzanine boards are available to expand the available ISE Board
memory to up to 64 Mbytes.

The Open uCR/Embedded Operating System Runs on the ISE Board

The ISE board comes with a license to and a copy of the
uCR/Embedded Operating System, for the software engineer writing
and debugging software to run on the ISE board. uCR also supports
other i960 and Motorola 68EC000 targets, and has preliminary
support for Intel 386 and SPARC CPUs. uCR can be run using
Linux/SPARC and Linux/Intel as a virtual board for those
programmers wishing to experiment with or port software to uCR.

Source code for uCR can be copied freely under the terms of
the GNU General Public License. Use of uCR in a commercial
product requires a license. Binary distribution terms are
available and are reasonably priced.

The documentation and source snapshots are available for
browsing and free download, and will be updated from time to
time. The source is available by anonymous FTP. More information
is available at the uCR Home Page.